In the last month at my organization, there has been blatant discrimination against queer/transgender/non-binary volunteers who want to become a mentor for children. Most recently, at our bi-monthly meeting, my supervisor said “ok, so we have this volunteer…they are genderqueer and non-binary. And their other qualifications are XYZ…do we have a child who would actually be a good match with them?”
My co-worker spoke up and said something along the lines of “Actually, yes! I just interviewed a parent and child who said they have no sexual orientation preference as to whether their mentor is transgender, bisexual, queer, etc. They also are fine with all of the other preferences you mentioned.”
My supervisor then said “hmmm. Ok. Well, we are just not ready to work with this type of situation. We just don't have the tools. Right now we want to focus on matching males with males, and females with females. Does this make sense to everyone?” So why in the hell did she even ask? Likely just to “seem” inclusive, because my organization TOUTS that all day, believe me.
The other week, the same conversation occurred when we had a transgender volunteer. This means that my supervisor claims to only match males with males/women with women, yet does not see a trans male as a male. So, same type of conversation, with discrimination.
It's beyond easy to approach an LGBTQ+ organization and ask for free sensitivity training or diversity training. Honestly, just partnering with a local organization would be an amazing idea, but my workplace isn't interested; I was told it was mentioned before. My co-workers understand it is discrimination, and I'm ready to report it. My only issue is that it's a tight-knit non-profit, and I have no idea what the best route to go is.
The only supervisors are my boss and the CEO (who is also HR). Above them is the board of directors. None of us like the CEO, and I don't feel comfortable talking to her about this.
I do work at a large non-profit that's a nation-wide chain. Should I go that route, or go multiple routes?
Some additional fun facts about where I work:
*All of our staff, aside from the CEO, have been here 1 year or less.
*We push inclusivity HARD, and they even have us write our pronouns in our email signatures. Ah, look how cool and welcoming and full of crap we are!
*This past week we were given a deadline out of NOWHERE to make a number of mentor matches that is unattainable. Someone above obviously forgot about a deadline, and just didn't inform us.
*The above deadline is for…YOU GUESSED IT…a certain number of volunteer/child matches. So, they are desperate to make matches, but shot down the non-binary and transgender volunteers right away, despite having a child who was interested.
*This past week my supervisor said we need to pull nights and weekends to make this deadline. We are salary and already make crap money, so there is no OT pay. I highly doubt the board is aware of this either.